2021 NFL Draft: Jets, Jaguars make trades in new 2021 NFL mock draft
By Kyle Edmond
Lions take another first-round defensive tackle
Scouting Report. Pick Analysis. Christian Barmore. player. 50. DT. Alabama. 17
When I think about the first round for the Detroit Lions, my brain still goes back to the Nick Fairley and Ndamukong Suh drafts. Despite it being 10 years since Suh and nine since Fairley, it still seems like the Lions shouldn’t need a defensive tackle yet. But when your back-to-back first-round defensive tackles don’t play more than five years for your team, it’s easy to have it as a need again.
Suh and Fairley are far from the only defensive tackles to make their way through Detroit, but the hope is that Christian Barmore is the last for at least a handful of years. The Lions might be successful enough for Matt Patricia to keep his job at this rate, which most likely means more defensive picks for the Lions.
Barmore isn’t blowing up the stat sheet, registering just 12 tackles through four games, but he’s a force on the line that requires the opposing team to game plan for him. During the 2019 season, he played in 11 games and logged six tackles for loss in addition to two sacks. This year in his four games, he’s already matched that sack total and is almost halfway to his tackles for loss mark.
There’s still some work to be done for Barmore, but his raw skills and size make him an intriguing prospect to stick in the middle of the Detroit Lions defensive line.